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Australia wakes up to its new "Crocodile Dundee" PM

The original Crocodile Dundee (he of the movie) had some charm about him and was a rake.   

Australia wakes up to a new PM - post today's election - described in a piece "Pimping his daughters, a gaffe-prone Crocodile Dundee steps up to lead Australia" on the globalpost in not the most flattering of terms and certainly not suited to running a country in the 21st century.

"Comparisons in international politics are often futile. But given that President Barack Obama once described British Prime Minister David Cameron as a "lightweight," one can only imagine what his assessment of Tony Abbott might be.

Abbott is the man most likely to become the next prime minister of Australia. On Saturday, his party is expected to defeat the Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

And that could alter the world's benevolent view of Australia.

An ex-boxer who once trained for the priesthood, Abbott remains a staunch Catholic with strong anti-abortion views.

He has modeled himself on the "bloke next door," the family man Australians can trust. For most of his campaign he was flanked by his tall, coquettish adult daughters. The three young women have apparently succeeded more as objects to ogle than in modernizing their father's views.

"If you want to know who to vote for," he told the Australian Big Brother house, "I'm the guy with the not bad looking daughters."

As a student, he wrote, “I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.” When questioned by an interviewer, he declined to repudiate that notion.

On another occasion he sent Twitter into a frenzy by praising a female candidate’s "sex appeal." He later said he needed to be told by staffers why the comment had upset so many people.

It’s this ignorance of the modern world that makes Abbott look a bit like Crocodile Dundee, in a suit, running for the premiership (but without the crocodiles or the big knife).

He’s been accused in parliament and in the blogosphere of being a sexist misogynist, but criticism in the mainstream media has been less fierce. The influential Murdoch press has taken a vocal pro-Abbott stance.

His "larrikin" (Aussie for “blokey” or rowdy) streak has played well to the masses.

Nicknamed the "Mad Monk," Abbott’s ascendency has been well-managed, but not without luck, his time in opposition coinciding with the implosion of the ruling Labor Party."




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